Friday round-up

Posted Fri, April 19th, 2019 6:46 am by Edith Roberts

As Amy Howe reports for this blog, the court issued revisions to its rules yesterday that reduce the word limits for merits briefs and “require the parties to a case before the Supreme Court to identify any lower-court cases that are directly related to the Supreme Court proceedings.” At Bloomberg Law, Kimberly Robinson reports that practitioners welcomed the latter changes, which are “intended to reduce ‘missed’ conflicts, where the justices recognize late in proceedings that there are grounds for recusal.”

This blog’s analysis of Tuesday’s argument in North Carolina Dept of Revenue v. Kimberley Rice Kaestner 1992 Family Trust, which asks whether a trust beneficiary’s residence is sufficient under the due process clause for a state to assert tax jurisdiction over trust income, comes from Erin Scharff. Howard Wasserman has this blog’s analysis of Wednesday’s oral argument in McDonough v. Smith, in which the court considered when the statute of limitations begins to run for federal civil rights claims based on fabrication of evidence in criminal proceedings.

Briefly:

At The George Washington Law Review’s On the Docket blog, John Bessler argues that Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion in Bucklew v. Precythe, in which the court rejected a death-row inmate’s argument that, because he suffers from a rare medical condition, executing him by lethal injection would be so painful that it would violate the constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, “offers a torturous, unprincipled reading of the Eighth Amendment.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is counsel on an amicus brief in support of the petitioner in this case.]

In the latest episode of the Heritage Foundation’s SCOTUS 101 podcast, “Kevin Daley from the Daily Caller joins Elizabeth Slattery to dispel an RBG conspiracy theory and break down a ‘scandalous’ Supreme Court oral argument.”

At the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Stories & Commentaries blog, Todd McFarland outlines “several encouraging developments” related to the cert petition in Patterson v. Walgreen Co., which asks exactly how much employers must do under federal law to accommodate an employee’s religious practices.

At Rewire.News’ Boom! Lawyered podcast, “Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo discuss the case of Jamal Knox, a young rapper who was convicted for terroristic threats and witness intimidation based on the lyrics of his music,” whose cert petition the justices denied on Monday.

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On Friday, April 3, Justice Stephen Breyer spoke to students at the United Nations International School in New York City. The justice gave his talk remotely via video call, while self-quarantining at home in Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.